By Katie Donnelly O’Neill
Volunteer organizations are turning away the flood of Centretown high school students scrambling to complete the 40 hours of community service they need to graduate this spring.
“It is pretty simple: no hours means no graduation,” says Darl DiMillo, a guidance counsellor at Immaculata High School. Of the 150 Grade 12 students slated to graduate from Immaculata in June, about 50 have yet to hand in or complete their hours, he says.
This year’s Grade 12 class will be the first to graduate under the new curriculum implemented by the Ontario government. Students have been aware of the mandatory community service requirement since the beginning of high school.
Although Immaculata provides the students with a list of potential volunteer placements, there is no guarantee that the organization will take them.
For example, Glebe Collegiate student Maya Santaro was turned away by 15 organizations — among them, the Salvation Army, the Victorian Order of Nurses, Citizen Advocacy, and Big Brothers and Big Sisters — for various reasons, including age and time requirements.
The Ottawa Humane Society used to welcome calls from high school students wanting to volunteer with the organization, says volunteer manager Christine Wheeler.
But after receiving around 40 calls a day from interested students, Wheeler could not deal with all the requests.
“I finally just put a message on my machine saying all the positions were full,” she says.The Humane Society is only one of the many organizations that are turning away volunteers. It can only take about 20 students at a time and even finding them a position can be difficult due to their schedules.
“Most of our programs take place during the daytime, so it becomes a burden to try to place all these students,” she says.
The only activity that takes place during the evening is dog walking and Wheeler says some of the students are not prepared for what that entails.
“Just because you have a dog at home doesn’t mean you can handle shelter animals. I have seen little 16-year-old girls being hauled down the street by one of the larger dogs,” Wheeler says.
The situation at the Ottawa Civic Hospital is not much different.
“I have had to turn away about 10 per cent of students who have called,” says student volunteer co-ordinator, Jamie Harland.
Although the Civic Hospital has found a place for the majority of students, they are not always interested in their positions.
“The students are not interested in working with the elderly patients or in the field of health care — they just need somewhere to volunteer,” Harland explains.
Each of the 50 students volunteering at the hospital was required to go through training sessions. Harland says most of the students’ dedication is low and once they hit the 40-hour mark they are gone.
However some organizations continue to welcome volunteers, including Play for Peace.
The volunteers travel to elementary schools where they lead the students in various games. The movement encourages children from different cultural backgrounds to learn together.
“We have 35 students right now and we can always take more,” says Stephanie Estabrook, the youth community developer at the Somerset West Community Health Centre.
More volunteers mean the movement can reach more children, Estabrook says.